DXP

Deep eXecution Processor (DXP) is a new class of processor that delivers breakthrough performance at the ultra-low power consumption necessary in mobile applications. It’s designed and implemented specifically to target wireless communications algorithms and control code.

The DXP design allows the entire modem functionality (including physical layer, protocol stack, RTOS, drivers, and codecs) to be implemented in software on a single-core device. This can be achieved without any hardware acceleration blocks, separate protocol stack processors, duplicated tightly-coupled memories, or distributed memories across the device.

The complexity of all the different wireless modes and algorithms can now be abstracted to software running on DXP. This means new multi-mode products can be brought to market much faster than with the conventional ASIC approach. New modes can also be added easily and standards can be tracked from the same Icera baseband.

Adaptive Wireless™

Adaptive Wireless is a unique, software-defined feature set that runs with the Icera soft baseband. It allows device manufacturers to develop multiple products with different performance levels—all from a common platform. This provides big advantages for device manufacturers, including reduced cost of ownership, faster time to market, higher performance, and a roadmap to support multiple future standards.

Adaptive Wireless Advantage

With conventional hard-wired solutions, you have to instantiate all signal-processing algorithms used to receive and decode the signal as separate areas of silicon. This results in a high-cost solution with inherent inflexibility. Plus, verification of these separate hardware operating modes is arduous and problematic. This leads to a solution that can’t provide optimum performance under all circumstances, as inevitable compromises are made with algorithm parameters.

In contrast, implementing these complex algorithms in software eliminates the need to always to use the same receiver architecture. For example, a menu of receiver algorithms—including rake, advanced receivers, and receive diversity—can be made available to the modem without incurring increased cost or increased silicon verification time. The Adaptive Wireless solution automatically selects the optimum mixture of algorithms that will maximize system performance. Channel conditions and other performance metrics are continuously monitored to determine the best receiver configuration and deliver the highest possible performance.

This dynamic receiver architecture delivers dramatic performance throughput gains and receiver sensitivity advantages. Files download in under half the time of other solutions. Web browsing is also noticeably faster. Network carriers achieve this dramatic user experience advantage with more than twice the sector capacity and a consequent 50% decrease in per-megabyte delivery cost.